Thank you so much.

“When you consider that so much institutional wisdom is erected atop this foundation of sand, I guess what I’m thinkin’ is, it doesn’t matter whether the Greatest Generation, the Boomers, the X’ers or the Millenials are calling the shots—we can’t seem to hoist ourselves from the tar pits of sacred legends long enough to try something that might actually work. We get incredible glimpses of hope every now and then. 1989 was one of them. You’re one of them. Your mom loves to talk about how the Banana River dolphins swung over to greet her the day before you were born. I’ve long thought that that would make a wonderful place to begin again.

Love, OST (Old Strange Thing)

11/13/09”

Dear Logan,

You turn thirteen in two days, and I'm worried about you. Your panic attacks have not improved, and your fascination with death and dying has only gotten worse with age. I'm concerned, especially after tonight.

"Logan," your mother jokingly asked you, "what would you like for your birthday?"

I expected to hear "cell phone," but you said this:

"Well, Mom, I would like my old house back, but I can't have that. I hope more closet space was worth ruining my childhood."

The look in your eyes was something I'd only seen from someone your age once before; I'd seen them in myself on one of those nights I would stare at my body in the mirror searching for and counting the number of protruding ribs I had. Your eyes were so dark and cold and so so distant. Your mother looked as if she had been punched in the chest, and what's worse, after you said that you gingerly picked up your fork and began twirling your spaghetti, acting as if nothing had happened. You didn't speak for the rest of the evening, and when the waiter took away your bowl, I noticed your food had barely been touched.

Logan, you are not your brother. He wears an auburn crown on his head, he can dance, and he can throw a ball. You are Logan; you are named after the small town in West Virginia that sits atop a mountain and looks out over the Guyandotte River, the place where your great-grandfather, a much admired sheriff, was born. You are also named after the town where he, on the day of his own parade, clutched his chest tightly and fell silently onto the cold leather seat of his old Crown Vic. You are Logan; you read poetry, you write stories, and when your cat Jessie died, you shaved off one of your eyebrows because you knew (you knew!) that that is what the Egyptians did when honoring one of their deceased feline friends.

You are a remarkable individual with an extraordinary mind, but those terribly dark eyes do not belong to such a young boy.

Speak

He was late. All was dark in their home, and he fumbled in like a drunken stranger. He could hear the floors as they slept; they gently sighed as his heavy feet made their way from the front door to the kitchen. He lackadaisically thrust his briefcase onto his armchair; it separated and splayed its leathery legs with almost too much ease, and he watched lazily as a few papers fell languidly to the floor.

And then there was a hum. She was waiting. In the fluorescent lights he saw her: her greyish eyes, hollow cheeks, and the sad white outline of her cotton underwear grazing against her tattered college sweatpants. He saw her hands, spotted and dry, and her feet that had widened substantially after their first child. And her toenail polish: indigo. It reminded him of those geysers they saw on their family vacation to Yellowstone. And all of a sudden, everything was sulfuric; he winced and covered his mouth, averting his eyes to the roar of the fluorescent lights.

She saw a single thread hanging from the cuff of his shirt like a loose tooth. A button had once been there. She stared at his feet. The tongue of his shoe lay lazily over his laces, speaking and saying more than either of those two had done in quite some time. His black pants that she had ironed that morning had dog hair on them. The cat's tail was teasing her left calve; she pushed it away. The zipper of his fly was sticking out, taunting her. It reminded her of an unruly bicuspid she had to remove that morning. The buttons of his shirt were one off. She got to his face; the whites of his eyes were sallow in the light, covered in what seemed to be a blood-saliva mixture. Something she had also seen that morning. He had been drinking, she knew. Sweat began to pool in his temples, and at the very top, she could see the beginnings of a receding hairline.

He looked at her, and immediately looked away. Drunken curiosity made him look back one more time. He didn't recognize her; her lips, once plump and soft like an overstuffed pillow now resembled the thin black line that appears when one lays on a bed for several hours. Her eyes, soft and doe like, now resembled the dark and cold lochs he encountered while on business in Scotland.

She scanned his eyes, but they kept hiding behind their thin, flesh colored veils so rapidly and erratically that they appeared to be some kind of Morse code. The cat began to sniff at his ankles. He shooed it away. Then, it hopped to the counter, its eyes set on the now cold hotplate she had set aside for him.

Both of their eyes followed the cat. He watched her while she stared resignedly at the animal; small and silent tears streamed from her eyes, filled the hollows of her cheeks, and made their way into the cracked tributaries of her lips. He reached his sweaty hand to her fleshy shoulder. She trembled.

She took the plate from the cat who had begun to lick its lips, and began scrubbing away at the food caked on it. His hands were throbbing at the same tempo of the droning howls of the lights. And the faucet spewed cold truth onto the dirty plate while she hacked away at the hardened mashed potatoes with her metal fork. She would occasionally scrape the china. He winced. The cat jumped from the counter, awaking the floor. It groaned. And the faucet kept crying, and the lights kept howling, and they both kept staring.

Then, the little boy in baby blue footed pajamas tottered silently into the kitchen. He was afraid of the Bedtime Monster. But he saw Mommy and Daddy standing together quietly by the sink in the bright light, and everything was OK. He turned on his padded toe and retreated quietly into the dark, smiling all the way to the pillow.

palindromes

It's all cyclical. It's happening now; it has happened; it happened; but what if it hadn't; it still happens. Tenses may change, but ultimately we must return to the present.

We read the newspapers, wonder what happened; could it be prevented? What if she went to the laundromat before? What if she stopped for a snack? Still, would it happen? It has happened; it did. And then we close the thin sheets riddled with words of the past and present, and open our eyes to the future. Where does the past go? Where do the words go and where do the people go when they meet the sharp silver lips of the shredder? Are they still with us; had they lived the life they desired; what if they didn't--how would they know? Oh Jesus, what do any of us know?

Accidents have happened, and I wonder if I close the paper I can predict what the future will present.

P.P.C.P.P
(present, past ((perfect)), conditional, past, present)

"On the Road"

Nothing ever changes, but we are constantly changing. That is something, for me at least, that is extremely difficult to wrap my mind around. Baby blue blankets and caskets, little girls quoting big books, fizzy giggling and dark eyes behind closed doors, and waiting hours in traffic for, well, nothing. What a life we live.

I've spent a lot of time driving lately. Today, I drove to the wake of my friend Mark's father. Before today, I had never seen a corpse; my family is all about ashes, I suppose. The concept seems foreign to me, and I felt like an outlet without a plug. That is, until I saw everyone's eyes.

I'd seen that kind of eye only once before, at my grandfather's funeral. I was playing Edelweiss on the violin, and my trembling fingers forgot that I was to play in G-major. I added a C sharp, and my fingers writhed in agony as the thin white instrument hit the soft metal string. I dropped the bow, and everything was silent. Family members were pulling out new handkerchiefs, but my grandmother was motionless. Her eyes were glossy and still like marbles. Keep playing, my mother mouthed. But I couldn't; the bow had fallen and dirt was covering the white hair. And I couldn't stop staring at my grandmother's eyes, and how far off they seemed; they reminded me of planets then. I didn't finish the song.

Nothing changed at this place. Eyes were plutonian, and directed toward the casket on the altar. And I was struck, dumbfounded even, at what befell me. Mark's dad had suffered through brain cancer and a coma, and therefore he had not a single hair on his entire body. The body was bloated and his skin was waxen, resembling in color the lazy sunlight that seeped through the stain glass windows.

What was most remarkable was the color of his casket: baby blue. It was inappropriate to say at the time, and maybe even now, but when I looked to the middle of the church, I didn't see a middle aged corpse; I saw a sleeping baby. And I saw the eyes of my grandmother, and wondered if she didn't see her husband, but something else.

And as I was leaving, I looked through the naked branches of the sky. It was baby blue. It was the body, and the baby, and the blanket, and the casket. I understood everything and nothing at the same time.

***

I went driving again the other night, this time to a party. It was at the home of a girl a year younger than me: a costume party. I thought to myself that this was a bit redundant, college freshmen wear masks daily. But I had no room to talk, I was the one wearing sunglasses at night.

I had a paper bag filled with a bottle of cheap champagne in my hand. And dark words with whispers appeared. "Oh my God, dude, is that alcohol?" it said, sound aiming toward my bag. "Shit, it is! I'm getting schwasted tonight." I smiled politely, then shut the door behind me.

I made my way to the living room, silently sipping from a solo cup, watching quietly as I saw flashes of 10.0 megapixel silhouettes from the kitchen. Some girls wore pigtails and flowery dresses without panties, some girls looked at boys and then hid their pupils with their eyelashes, and some girls quoted Jack Kerouac. "Have you read On the Road?" I said no. And then they spoke of mad men, and roman candles. My cheeks began to flush.

I went into the next room. The girl hosting the party was worried that certain promiscuous guests were having sex in her parents' bedroom. I put the cup down and went upstairs to investigate. I heard soft and muffled noises beyond the white door. I knocked, and opened the door.

A drunk girl with raccoon eyes was lying supine beneath the sheets, limbs hanging aimlessly like a marionette. The boy looked at me, cheeks flushed, and with sweat collecting on his temples. Her eyes were far away, like my Grandmother's. "What?" the boy said.

I furrowed my brows. "You know what," I said. "Have some class and don't fuck someone at a party." Again, I smiled politely, and shut the door behind me. Was I really only a year older than them? What had that girl seen to have eyes like my grandmother? It perplexed me; it was sweet and pathetic and beautiful and so so lonely, and God, I felt so old.

***

The next night, I attended another party, and ran into someone who I once loved immensely. Maybe I still do, I don't know. And I was amazed; when I met his eyes, I did not respond with passion, wanting, or even hatred. Just nothing. And to be honest, it really fucking scared me. I thought of eggs, and how they start out white with the potential of something feathery and great, and how one of three things happens:

-they hatch, and eventually die naturally
-their shell is shattered and cooked by others
-they do not hatch at all, and just rot

The result is the same no matter what. I looked into his eyes, and then I later looked at mine. I even looked at the happy costumed couples, and I saw the same thing: egg whites and black yolks. All the same.

***

I drove back from the wake today with a friend, discussing death, the future, and plans. As I was admiring the robin's egg sky and its red breasted foliage, I was interrupted by abrasive orange brake lights in front of me. Damn it, I thought. The jam was long--it seemed unending. Must have been something major, a multi-vehicle accident, heavy construction, something important.

My friend and I talked about the seasons. I prefer them, I said. I lived 12 years of my life without them, and sometimes I think we need Winter to kick us in the ass and remind us of how small we really are. I told him, essentially, I wanted to live somewhere with dynamic seasons.

Finally, the orange stream of traffic was met by a single orange sign: "Right Lane Closed." I was baffled. You mean to tell me, I said, that we waited so long for this, and this is it? This stupid orange sign? What a miserable color. What a miserable fucking life.

***

And I'm sitting here now, pen and paper, trying to figure it all out. I look to the sky and know nothing, only life and death and the interconnectedness of it all. I look to myself and know nothing, my eyes are only yolk and whites, and so are everyone else's. And I guess we'll never really know anything, but maybe it's better that way.